42 Saddle and Sirloin. 



the late Mr. Wright, a very extensive and hospitable 

 carrier and farmer. The High Sheriff generally met 

 them, in great state, at Rule Holme Bridge. Mr. 

 Justice Coleridge would have had no opening for his 

 joke in after-years, when a lot of little urchins 

 crowded on a dismal night round the station-door: 

 "Are these, Mr. High Sheriff, your posse comitatus?" 



Posting was a sad mockery to the briefless ; but it 

 gave the Queen's Counsel importance when they 

 drove into a town with their own carriages, and an 

 Attorney or Solicitor-General coming down special 

 with four horses was an event indeed. Lancaster 

 saw a good deal of this during the eternal Tatham 

 Case, in which by degrees nearly every judge on the 

 bench was retained, till the choice of Northern Circuit 

 judges had to be made specially with reference to 

 it ; and at Carlisle you might see Cresswell's and 

 Alexander's carriages drawn out when the assizes 

 were over, and packed with law reports, &c., before 

 an admiring audience in front of their lodgings in 

 English-street. As for the former, he took matters 

 so easily that, even when he was leader, he never 

 seemed to do any work out of Court hours ; and we 

 used to look at him with boyish awe loitering along 

 Etterby Scaur, and trying to hench stones over the 

 Eden. 



Coachmen and guards could endure much fatigue, 

 but the post-boys of the great north road were quite 

 their equals in this way. Jack Story, of the Crown at 

 Penrith, once rode at a pinch 108 miles twice to 

 Carlisle and back, and once to Keswick in a day, 

 when he was past seventy. It was a very " throng 

 time," as parliament had just risen, and tourists were 

 flocking to the lakes, but such a ride made no diffe- 

 rence to him, and he ultimately died at the age of 

 eighty-five. He was full of odd tales about those he 

 had driven, and considered that on the whole barris- 

 ters were more devoted to their dinners than any of 



